This paper analyzes the seasonal and annual patterns of precipitation and temperature in the Castelporziano Nature Reserve from 1980. It also considers an index that combines precipitation and evapotranspiration. The results indicate various patterns within this small region, primarily influenced by the distance from the coast. Additionally, there is a clear upward trend in temperature. The joint analysis of precipitation and...

Forest models are instrumental for understanding and projecting the impact of climate change on forests. A considerable number of forest models have been developed in the last decades. However, few systematic and comprehensive model comparisons have been performed in Europe that combine an evaluation of modelled carbon and water fluxes and forest structure. We evaluate 13 widely used, state‐of‐the‐art, stand‐scale forest model...

Two simplifying hypotheses have been proposed for whole‐plant respiration. One links respiration to photosynthesis; the other to biomass. Using a first‐principles carbon balance model with a prescribed live woody biomass turnover, applied at a forest research site where multidecadal measurements are available for comparison, we show that if turnover is fast the accumulation of respiring biomass is low and respiration depends p...

The response of forest ecosystems to increased atmospheric CO 2 is constrained by nutrient availability. It is thus crucial to account for nutrient limitation when studying the forest response to climate change. The objectives of this study were to describe the nutritional status of the main European tree species, to identify growth‐limiting nutrients and to assess changes in tree nutrition during the past two decades. We anal...

We studied forest monitoring data collected at permanent plots in Italy over the period 2000–2009 to identify the possible impact of nitrogen (N) deposition on soil chemistry, tree nutrition and growth. Average N throughfall (N‐NO 3 +N‐NH 4 ) ranged between 4 and 29 kg ha −1 yr −1 , with Critical Loads (CLs) for nutrient N exceeded at several sites. Evidence is consistent in pointing out effects of N deposition on soil and tre...

Understanding how net ecosystem exchange (NEE) changes with temperature is central to the debate on climate change‐carbon cycle feedbacks, but still remains unclear. Here, we used eddy covariance measurements of NEE from 20 FLUXNET sites (203 site‐years of data) in mid‐ and high‐latitude forests to investigate the temperature response of NEE. Years were divided into two half thermal years (increasing temperature in spring and...

This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods that separate net ecosystem exchange (NEE) into its major components, gross ecosystem carbon uptake (GEP) and ecosystem respiration ( R eco ). In particular, we analyse the effect of the extrapolation of night‐time values of ecosystem respiration into the daytime; this is usually done with a temperature response function that is derived from long‐te...

We present carbon stable isotope, δ 13 C, results from air and organic matter samples collected during 98 individual field campaigns across a network of Carboeuroflux forest sites in 2001 (14 sites) and 2002 (16 sites). Using these data, we tested the hypothesis that δ 13 C values derived from large‐scale atmospheric measurements and models, which are routinely used to partition carbon fluxes between land and ocean, and potent...